


Rollercoaster

by littlealex



Category: Arashi (Band), Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Community: jentfic_remix, Fluff, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-25
Updated: 2009-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you need to stop a moment to remember the pay-off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rollercoaster

Sakurai Sho has always had a love/hate relationship with Arashi. It's nothing personal, and nothing he would ever change, but it's always felt like a rollercoaster. A giant, ten year long rollercoaster that has given him his highest highs and his lowest lows and thrown him for many loops. Some days, he hates everything about Arashi. He hates the success, he hates the history, he hates the members, he hates the staff, he hates the fans, he hates the long nights and the lack of sleep and the constant, never-ending _movement_ of it all. Other days, those are exactly the things he loves and could never live without.

This week, he hates Arashi. It's nothing in particular, just the general sort of build up that happens to each of them over time, but there's always the straw that breaks the camel's back. This time that straw is named Aiba Masaki.

"Aiba, what the fuck?" Nino's the first to crack on this particular occasion, but that's only because he's been itching to play his new game since before they even hit the rehearsal room.

"If you're not going to be serious, Aiba, just get out of here." Unsurprisingly, Jun's words are the hardest, and Ohno tries to placate him as Aiba begins to defend himself.

"Sorrysorrysorry," Aiba rattles, his loud, high voice reverberating in the empty room, arms flailing and eyes pleading. "I know what I have to do, my legs just aren't following me, okay? I've been practicing, I just can't ... seem to get it right, you know?"

Most days, Sho would have made a joke, lightened the situation, but today he doesn't have the energy for it. He's had five hours of sleep in the last three days and Red Bull just isn't cutting it. His brain feels stuffed full of things to do and the knowledge that he has so little time in which to do them; just hearing Aiba's voice makes him want to punch the wall. Today, Aiba's pleading is even more annoying than Jun's frustration or Nino's whining, but he swallows it back and tries to block it out.

Usually, Aiba's pretty good at sensing when things are off with him, but today is not Aiba's day. Sho doesn't see or hear Aiba coming, but he freezes when he feels a hand on his shoulder and he glares at Aiba so hard he's surprised it doesn't kill him.

Still, Aiba doesn't see it and opens his mouth to speak anyway. "Hey, Sho-chan, can you help me with these steps? I'm going out of my mind trying to figure them out. Pretty please?"

Sho doesn't snap until the "pretty please", at which point he shakes his shoulder out from under Aiba's hand, takes a step back, and snatches the towel from his waistband. "No, you know what, Aiba? You should know this shit already, we've been learning it for weeks. I can't hold your fucking hand every time you fuck up, okay?" He leaves, then, literally throwing in the towel for dramatic effect.

Nobody follows him.

That night, when they have to perform the dance that Aiba still can't get right in the Music Station green room, Sho is sitting on the couch, frantically messaging his and Arashi's managers who somehow managed to double-book him on location shoots for tomorrow morning. He wants to hit something, but channels the feeling so well into his mails that Ohno sits down on the couch and actually ventures to speak to him.

"You don't usually yell." Ohno's voice is quiet and mumbling as ever, and the hesitancy Sho usually finds endearing just frustrates him. He stares at his phone in case he explodes.

"Occasionally I have to," he replies simply, refusing to meet Ohno's eyes.

"I know, but you know how Aiba-chan is."

"What, a sensitive little girl?" His voice is louder than he expects, and his skin crawls with the effort of keeping himself together. (The trouble with snapping, Sho thinks, is that it's too hard to stop once you've started.)

Ohno shushes him and puts a hand on his arm as he notices Aiba look over. This wouldn't usually bother Sho, but the touch feels heavy and he breaks under the pressure. "For fuck's sake, Satoshi," he hisses, dealing Ohno the same glare he gave Aiba earlier. "We're about to be on live television, do you really want me to hurt you right now?"

"Why are you being such a dick today, Sakurai?" Sho hears Nino's disembodied voice first and looks around for him. He quickly sees Nino's pointed little face peeking out from beneath the table and Sho moves quickly to stand beside him.

"Why am I being such a dick?" He repeats, staring down at Nino, his mobile phone gripped tightly in his hand. "Because I'm tired, hungry, and have coworkers with noodles for brains, okay? Is that enough of a reason?"

"Whatever," Nino shrugs, disappearing under the table again and Sho remembers why he hates fighting with Nino the most. When Nino gives up a fight too easily, it only means he's going to hold a grudge. Nothing good has ever come of Nino with a grudge.

Left standing in the middle of the Music Station green room with an empty feeling that manages to feel like both exhaustion and adrenaline, Sho looks around the room. Jun is the only one he hasn't yelled at yet, but that's because Sho knows that he would take it personally and the damage control afterwards would not be worth the moment of release.

Music Station fares well enough. Aiba fucks up, but who hasn't fucked up on Music Station? The talk goes fine, their lines sound well-enough rehearsed, and Sho manages a smile as he talks about the drama that's going to eat up even more time in his schedule. He survives, though, and just barely manages to get changed and reply to the few dozen messages on his phone before feeling like he's going to collapse.

He must look like it this time because Jun, as the last person there, puts a hand on the small of his back and just looks at him. Sho returns the look and can feel a half-frown settling on his features no matter how hard he tries not to look anything but stoic, which only makes Jun smile.

"We're all tired. We're all hungry. We all have coworkers with noodles for brains. It's hard, but the best thing - the only thing you can do is remember that we're all in this together. We're not the enemy."

"I know that, but...." Sho barely has the energy to get the words out, and he wonders if Jun has learned some secret trick to sucking the nervous energy and post-performance rush out of him. He suspects it's the hand on the back.

"Promise me, before the shoot tomorrow, you'll wake up just a little early, go to the roof in your pajamas with some tea, and watch the sunrise." Jun's voice is gentle and soothing, and Sho wishes he had the strength to hit him but he doesn't know how he'll manage getting home let alone physical violence.

"Watch the sunrise? Please, Jun, I'm not all new-age like you."

"Watch the sunrise, and just think. You'll remember why you want to keep going." The problem with arguing with Jun, Sho thinks, is that no matter how much you want to hate him for it, he usually knows what to say.

"Okay, fine. But if it doesn't work, you're making excuses for me so I can take a nap."

"Deal."

The next morning, Sho goes to the roof of his apartment building with a huge mug of tea, still hating Arashi. Jun's gentle words had softened him at the end of a long day, but after a few hours of sleep, everything starts buzzing in his brain and the tension in his muscles returns.

He thinks watching the sunrise is a stupid idea, because it's not as though he's never seen a sunrise before. He's seen them often, out of windows mainly, and they're nothing special. It's not a nice morning, either; it's hazy and polluted in the city and it ruins the effect of a crisp sunrise.

As the sky gets lighter, however, something happens. It's not spiritual or religious - he doesn't feel the earth move or the wind pick up - but he starts to feel lighter as well. He starts to think about all the sunrises he's ever seen, and why he's seen them. He's seen sunrises out of the windows of airplanes, helicopters and trains shunting him to new and different places. He's seen sunrises at the tops of mountains, peeking through thick forests, rising over beaches and fighting through a city full of skyscrapers. He's seen almost any kind of sunrise you can imagine, and he knows there is only one reason he has ever seen those sort of sunrises - Arashi.

Arashi is still a gut-wrenching rollercoaster ride, though, and just remembering all the sunrises he's seen thanks to that rollercoaster doesn't make Sho forget that he's tired, hungry and overworked. What the memories do is give him some perspective. Because he knows that someday, when he's old, he'll still be able to look at a sunrise and remember the ones he's seen before. The troughs of the rollercoaster are only for now, but the crests will remain with him forever.

On the way to work, Sho decides he doesn't hate everything quite as much. A weight has been lifted from his shoulders and even though he knows how busy he is and will be, he feels refreshed. He messages his managers to apologize for his tone and memorizes a few well-chosen lines to say to the other members, even though everyone knows that it was just the stress talking.

When he gets to the green room, Aiba's the only one there. Asleep on his back on the floor in front of the couch, hands folded over his chest, he's a picture of serenity and Sho doesn't really want to wake him. But he's on the _floor_ , which for anyone else would be the most uncomfortable place to sleep, and Sho laughs quietly to himself as he approaches Aiba. Only for Aiba does sleeping on the floor make sense.

"Aiba-chan," Sho whispers, kneeling down beside his friend. For a moment he hopes that Aiba doesn't wake up, but in the end his practical side kicks in and he nudges Aiba's shoulder gently. "Don't sleep on the floor, it's not very comfortable. The couch is right here, come on now..."

Aiba opens his eyes slowly and Sho feels a warm rush of affection through his body as they share a smile. It seems impossible, watching Aiba drift into consciousness with the sun streaked across his smiling face, that he was ever angry or frustrated with him. "Sho-chan...?"

"Morning, sunshine," Sho whispers in a sing-song voice. It makes Aiba giggle and Sho tries hard not to join him.

"Mmm, morning," Aiba mumbles, stretching his arms above him as though preparing to wake up, but he gives up halfway through and wraps his arms around Sho's neck instead, pulling him into a hug.

It's not the most graceful of hugs, and Sho's nose connects hard against Aiba's collarbone, his legs caught up beneath him. In the end, he's left with his hands planted on either side of Aiba and his ass sticking up in the air. Aiba just giggles and doesn't let go.

Sho pleads with Aiba to let him go, tries to convince him that the couch would be much more comfortable, but Aiba remains steadfast. Sho begins to wonder how such a sleepy person could have such an effective death grip, but gives in after a while. He rearranges his limbs so he's lying on the floor curled up to Aiba's side and he succumbs to the hug.

"Just five minutes. Then to the couch, okay?" Aiba makes a noise of assent, but Sho's not convinced.

For a moment, all Sho can think about is when they'll have to wake up, when everyone else is going to turn up, and how he's going to have to apologize to everyone after having been found irresponsibly napping. His thoughts begin to buzz and he doesn't like it, so he closes his eyes and concentrates on the slow, steady _thump-thump_ of Aiba's heartbeat just beneath his ear. It's not difficult to catch onto the rhythm, and with the warm morning sun pouring in through the window and the familiar scent of Aiba in the air, he finds himself drifting off to sleep.

Sho has no idea how long he's been asleep when he wakes up next. Nobody woke him, but evidently some time has passed because he quickly finds that he and Aiba are no longer alone. The rest of the members have sneaked in at some point and fallen asleep, Ohno and Nino curled around the bottom half of Sho and Aiba, while Jun took the most sensible spot on the couch. Sho looks around at them quietly for a moment, perplexed as to why they would want to crowd around someone who'd yelled at them the night before. He spots a smile on Jun's mouth, though, and it says, "See, I was right about the sunrise".

Sho glances up at Aiba then, startled to find that the other boy is awake. It takes him a moment, but he smiles and opens his mouth to apologize for the day before. Before he gets to say anything, though, Aiba presses a finger to his own lips and grins behind the gesture. Sho nods, swallowing back the apology for now, and they both lower their heads and close their eyes. He promises that he won't let the words he'd planned to say go unsaid, running through them in his mind one more time, when he feels Aiba's hand slip into his and link their fingers.

It's a cheesy gesture, but Sho can't help grinning to himself. He knows that Aiba can tell what he's thinking (he suspects Aiba knew from the moment he tried to wake him), and the grip on his hand feels like Aiba accepting his apology. So much goes unsaid between all of them: just as he can tell that the huddled mass of bodies on the floor means he's forgiven, he also knows that they know he's sorry. It makes him feel incredibly warm, knowing that he is understood so well, and he can't help but squeeze Aiba's hand as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold on a little tighter to the feeling.

Today, he loves Arashi, and wouldn't give up this rollercoaster for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [jentfic_remix](http://community.livejournal.com/jentfic_remix), a remix of [xplodey-di](http://xplodey-di.livejournal.com/)'s untitled drabble [here](http://community.livejournal.com/orchard_blossom/28432.html). The original is [here](http://community.livejournal.com/jentfic_remix/15742.html). And this would not be nearly as good without the ever-patient help of pithetaphish.


End file.
